


Laid to Waste

by Astrarian



Series: Writer's Month, August 2020 [7]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Pressure Injury, Writer's Month 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:29:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25773631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astrarian/pseuds/Astrarian
Summary: Thanks to Samaritan, Shaw spent months drugged to the eyeballs and lying motionless. Her body isn't what it once was.(Writer's month 2020 - Day 7: hurt/comfort)
Relationships: Root | Samantha Groves/Sameen Shaw
Series: Writer's Month, August 2020 [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1861909
Comments: 2
Kudos: 54
Collections: Writer's Month 2020





	Laid to Waste

**Author's Note:**

> A post-"MIA" setting (that's probably a classic by now huh). Samaritan has Shaw for ages but doesn't quite do to her what season 5 presented, and the background circumstances of the team getting Shaw back are different. I did cherry-pick the Atari/Casio dialogue from season 5's "6,471" though.

Shaw’s been shot before. She’s been punched, scalded, stabbed. Her body has endured explosions and falls and submersion, beatings and broken bones and split skin. She’s crouched on dirty floors and ratty couches and in hidden corners in order to stitch herself shut or reset her joints or bandage herself up. And there have been beds, so many beds, dirty, clean, broken, big. Over and over, she’s recovered from physical trauma on a bed, her body healing her wounds as she either clenches her teeth to tolerate the pain or recognises that it’s too much and anaesthetises herself.

What’s never happened to Shaw before is the opposite: when the total absence of physical movement causes atrophy, and the wounds to speak of are ulcers. When the bed is a prison, rather than an oasis.

Samaritan had her drugged to hell and beyond with a cocktail only the Machine could decipher. She was cuffed to a bed for months and months, trapped inside her brain. She ran and ran, kicked and killed and cursed, and never got anywhere, because she wasn’t really doing any of those things.

She knows this not just because Root told her how the team found her. She knows it because every muscle fibre hurts, she bruises like a peach at the smallest knock, and her ass is seven shades of purple and stings like hell.

Comparatively, the sores are minor. They will heal like every other wound has. But whenever she's awake, and often in her dreams too, she burns with fury that Samaritan didn't even treat her with the dignity of a long-term patient or a useful asset. She's so angry that it feels like her brain is on fire right along with the rest of her, smouldering in a way she’s not familiar with. 

It seems likely that being drugged up to her eyeballs and playing a rigged mental minefield has physically changed her brain as well as her body.

Shaw used to be able to fight off a bunch of goons and have more than enough energy to spare for a pursuit. Now it takes an appalling amount of perseverance to do the tiniest work-out. She’s pushing herself, harder than a medical professional would probably recommend, but the fire of just enduring her wasted body and thinking about Samaritan is far worse than the fiery pain of starting to fix herself.

Half-sick with exhaustion after only a few sets, she sinks to her knees on the exercise mat on the subway floor. Her arms can barely lift her own damn body weight. Kneeling up is unpleasant, but if she sits in this state, she risks dragging her ass, and then her sores could split open.

Her cot’s a few feet away, off the edge of the exercise mat. It’s simply a mattress and a pile of bedding on the floor, because hearing the original metal bedstead creak while half-asleep made her freak out so hard that she nearly strangled Root when she came to investigate.

The distance between where Shaw is now and the bed looks like miles.

Shaw reaches for a nearby uncapped water bottle with shaking hands and sips. The water isn't as cool as she'd like, but it’s welcome nonetheless. For a moment she stops concentrating on the bottle, though, and it slips right out of her grip to the floor. Water spills across the mat and her sweatpants.

Shaw’s hands curl into fists. She hits them against her wet knees. “ _Damn it!_ ”

Drawn by the noise, Root appears from around the corner. “Sameen?” she asks in a murmur.

“Get outta here, Root,” Shaw growls, hating that she’s too weak to walk out of here and burn Samaritan to the ground. She particularly hates Root for knowing she’ll see Shaw like this and coming anyway.

Root watches her attentively, which serves to remind Shaw of so many conversations and firefights and sexual encounters in the past, before everything went to a whole new level of FUBAR. Before Samaritan practically turned her into a vegetable. The mental image makes her angrier and she looks away, grinding her teeth.

“Sweetie, it’s just a bottle of water,” Root says.

Shaw can’t parse what the hell that really means or how a normal person would react to it. She’s never, ever had patience for that, and she absolutely doesn’t today.

Her rage flares up in a shout and a burst of energy that drives her to her feet. “Get the hell out of here!”

At least she’s strong enough to do that, even though she can’t follow it up by throwing something at Root. She kicks at the water bottle, gaining some small satisfaction when it spins and sprays the remaining water across the floor, followed immediately by further rage and deeper exhaustion as she acknowledges how light the bottle is.

Root clenches her jaw. “Don’t do that,” she says, voice cracking. “Please.”

Shaw glares at her, notices Root blinking rapidly, and recognises what’s happening. She’s crying.

Instinctively, she tries to work out how she can get out of the situation. She sure as hell isn’t the right person for emotional reassurance at the best of times, never mind right now. But she’s trapped. She’s hardly able to take the steps necessary to reach the bed, staggering before she’s even managed the first one.

Root closes the distance between them, wrapping her arms around Shaw, taking her weight effortlessly. Shaw tries to resist, but just ends up further off-balance. Root tightens her embrace, and Shaw freezes in place, fight-or-flight response firing up. She’s little more than an animal on high alert, thrumming with the need to survive above all else in spite of her tiredness.

“I swear to you, sweetie, as soon as you’re ready, we’ll destroy Samaritan,” Root murmurs into Shaw’s hair.

It’s not some meaningless platitude, at least, though Shaw doesn’t know what to do with the words. Root continues to hold her up, making her head pound.

As the seconds pass she notes Root’s hold is firm enough to support her without pressing too tight. When Shaw finds the strength to shift her weight back onto her own feet in the circle of Root’s arms, Root lets her.

Shaw doesn’t move away. She waits. She listens to Root’s even breathing, trying to anticipate what the other woman will do or say next.

Despite sniffing softly, Root doesn’t sound like she’s out of control. Her breath tickles Shaw’s scalp as she speaks. 

“You and I,” she murmurs, “are going to tear it apart. Turn it into an Atari. No, that’s too nice. Maybe a Casio.” She sighs. “I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to it.”

“How?” Shaw growls. “I’m...” She shrugs.

“You’re injured, not broken,” Root says. She draws back ever-so-slightly, cocking her head, raising one arm. Gently, as if Shaw is a skittish creature, she cups her cheek. Her thumb comes to rest on the half-healed wound behind Shaw’s ear, where Samaritan cut into her. It’s so close to the heart of Shaw.

“And beautiful,” Root continues, half-smiling. “Nothing new.”

Again, Shaw doesn’t know what to do. So she takes it in. Does nothing. Doing nothing, rather than resisting, is the most she can give to Root. 

Somehow, for Root, nothing is enough. “The Machine’s already worked out half a dozen plans, ready for your review,” Root says, stroking behind Shaw’s ear again. “None of us are taking this as R and R.”

“I wish this was R and R,” Shaw says.

“Me too.”

Shaw takes in a breath, the heightened tension in her body unwinding, leaving behind exhaustion. “Speaking of,” she says, summoning enough energy to incline her head backwards.

“Take you to bed?” Root responds. “Oh sweetie, you only have to ask.”

“Maybe someday,” Shaw says.

It’s the weakest retort to flirtation she’s ever tried with Root, weak like the rest of her. It’s still apparently something because Root laughs, high and sharp. It’s so unlike her that Shaw looks at her again.

Tears have sprung to her eyes. “I hope so,” Root says, voice thick.

Shaw says nothing. Root accompanies Shaw to her bed, helping her down to the floor and taking her weight again while Shaw adjusts the blankets and her own position on them so as not to aggravate her ulcers. When Shaw winces anyway, she hears Root’s breath catch.

She waits for a clue, eyes on Root. She doesn’t get one, so again, she does nothing. She does nothing when Root stays at the edge of the mattress, and she does nothing except close her eyes when Root leans over and strokes her hair.

“You gonna stay?” Shaw questions, sleep coming up fast.

“I thought I might. Be a different kind of pain in your ass. But I could go.”

Behind closed eyelids, Root can’t see it, but Shaw rolls her eyes anyway. “You can stay,” she mutters.

“Sweet dreams,” Root whispers, and Shaw obeys. Her dreams are of Root’s promise. Shaw runs and kicks and kills and curses, her body back to full strength. Bullets fly and gunshots sing around her and Root as they lay waste to Samaritan the way it laid waste to Shaw, except properly—permanently.

Leaving her alive was Samaritan’s mistake. She and Root will make Samaritan rue it.


End file.
